Sustaining entrepreneurial business: a complexity perspective on processes that produce emergent practice

This article examines the management practices in an entrepreneurial small firm which sustain the business. Using a longitudinal qualitative case study, four general processes are identified (experimentation, reflexivity, organising and sensing), that together provide a mechanism to sustain the enterprise. The analysis draws on concepts from entrepreneurship and complexity science. We suggest that an entrepreneur’s awareness of the role of these parallel processes will facilitate their approaches to sustaining and developing enterprises. We also suggest that these processes operate in parallel at multiple levels, including the self, the business and inter-firm networks. This finding contributes to a general theory of entrepreneurship. A number of areas for further research are discussed arising from this result

Past, present and future of information and knowledge sharing in the construction industry: Towards semantic service-based e-construction

The paper reviews product data technology initiatives in the construction sector and provides a synthesis of related ICT industry needs. A comparison between (a) the data centric characteristics of Product Data Technology (PDT) and (b) ontology with a focus on semantics, is given, highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. The paper advocates the migration from data-centric application integration to ontology-based business process support, and proposes inter-enterprise collaboration architectures and frameworks based on semantic services, underpinned by ontology-based knowledge structures. The paper discusses the main reasons behind the low industry take up of product data technology, and proposes a preliminary roadmap for the wide industry diffusion of the proposed approach. In this respect, the paper stresses the value of adopting alliance-based modes of operation

IR theory, historical materialism, and the false promise of international historical sociology

The three-decades old call for an inter-disciplinary rapprochement between IR Theory and Historical Sociology, starting in the context of the post-positivist debate in the 1980s, has generated a proliferating repertory of contending paradigms within the field of IR, including Neo-Weberian, Post-Structuralist, and Constructivist approaches. Within the Marxist literature, this project comprises an equally rich and diverse set of theoretical traditions, including World-Systems Theory, Neo-Gramscian IR/IPE, the Amsterdam School, Political Marxism, Neo-Leninism, and Postcolonial Theory. More recently, a “third wave” of approaches has been announced from within the field of IR, suggesting to move the dialogue from inter-disciplinarity towards an integrated super-discipline of International Historical Sociology (IHS). This proposition has been most persistently advanced by advocates of the theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD), claiming to constitute a universal, unitary and sociological theory of IR. This article charts the intellectual trajectory of this ongoing IR/HS dialogue. It moves from a critique of Neo-Weberianism to a critique of UCD against the background of the original promise of the turn in IR to Historical Sociology: the supersession of the prevailing rationalism, structuralism, and positivism in extant mainstream IR approaches through the mobilization of alternative and non-positivistic traditions in the social sciences. This critique will be performed by setting UCD in dialogue with Political Marxism. By anchoring both approaches at opposite ends on the spectrum of Marxist conceptions of social science – respectively the scientistic and the historicist - the argument is that UCD reneges on the promise of Historical Sociology for IR by re-aligning, first by default and now by design, with the meta-theoretical premises of Neo-Realism. This is most visibly expressed in the articulation of a deductive-nomological covering law, leading towards acute conceptual and ontological anachronisms, premised on the radical de-historicisation of the fields of ontology, conceptuality and disciplinarity. This includes the semantic neutering and hyper-abstract re-articulation of the very category, which in IR’s self-perception lends legitimacy to its claim of disciplinary distinctiveness: the international. The article concludes by suggesting that an understanding of Marxism as a historicist social science subverts all calls for the construction of grand theories and, a fortiori, a unitary super-discipline of IHS, premised on a set of universal, space-time indifferent, and abstract categories that hold across the spectrum of world history. In contrast, recovering the historicist credentials of Marxism demands a constant temporalisation and specification of the fields of ontology, agency, conceptuality and disciplinarity. The objective is to lay the foundations for a historicist social science of geopolitics

Building a Disciplinary, World-Wide Data Infrastructure

Sharing scientific data, with the objective of making it fully discoverable, accessible, assessable, intelligible, usable, and interoperable, requires work at the disciplinary level to define in particular how the data should be formatted and described. Each discipline has its own organization and history as a starting point, and this paper explores the way a range of disciplines, namely materials science, crystallography, astronomy, earth sciences, humanities and linguistics get organized at the international level to tackle this question. In each case, the disciplinary culture with respect to data sharing, science drivers, organization and lessons learnt are briefly described, as well as the elements of the specific data infrastructure which are or could be shared with others. Commonalities and differences are assessed. Common key elements for success are identified: data sharing should be science driven; defining the disciplinary part of the interdisciplinary standards is mandatory but challenging; sharing of applications should accompany data sharing. Incentives such as journal and funding agency requirements are also similar. For all, it also appears that social aspects are more challenging than technological ones. Governance is more diverse, and linked to the discipline organization. CODATA, the RDA and the WDS can facilitate the establishment of disciplinary interoperability frameworks. Being problem-driven is also a key factor of success for building bridges to enable interdisciplinary research.Comment: Proceedings of the session "Building a disciplinary, world-wide data infrastructure" of SciDataCon 2016, held in Denver, CO, USA, 12-14 September 2016, to be published in ICSU CODATA Data Science Journal in 201

Enhancing Workflow with a Semantic Description of Scientific Intent

Peer reviewedPreprin

Behavior change interventions: the potential of ontologies for advancing science and practice

A central goal of behavioral medicine is the creation of evidence-based interventions for promoting behavior change. Scientific knowledge about behavior change could be more effectively accumulated using "ontologies." In information science, an ontology is a systematic method for articulating a "controlled vocabulary" of agreed-upon terms and their inter-relationships. It involves three core elements: (1) a controlled vocabulary specifying and defining existing classes; (2) specification of the inter-relationships between classes; and (3) codification in a computer-readable format to enable knowledge generation, organization, reuse, integration, and analysis. This paper introduces ontologies, provides a review of current efforts to create ontologies related to behavior change interventions and suggests future work. This paper was written by behavioral medicine and information science experts and was developed in partnership between the Society of Behavioral Medicine's Technology Special Interest Group (SIG) and the Theories and Techniques of Behavior Change Interventions SIG. In recent years significant progress has been made in the foundational work needed to develop ontologies of behavior change. Ontologies of behavior change could facilitate a transformation of behavioral science from a field in which data from different experiments are siloed into one in which data across experiments could be compared and/or integrated. This could facilitate new approaches to hypothesis generation and knowledge discovery in behavioral science

Measuring the Global Research Environment: Information Science Challenges for the 21st Century

“What does the global research environment look like?” This paper presents a summary look at the results of efforts to address this question using available indicators on global research production. It was surprising how little information is available, how difficult some of it is to access and how flawed the data are. The three most useful data sources were UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Research and Development data (1996-2002), the Institute of Scientific Information publications listings for January 1998 through March 2003, and the World of Learning 2002 reference volume. The data showed that it is difficult to easily get a good overview of the global research situation from existing sources. Furthermore, inequalities between countries in research capacity are marked and challenging. Information science offers strategies for responding to both of these challenges. In both cases improvements are likely if access to information can be facilitated and the process of integrating information from different sources can be simplified, allowing transformation into effective action. The global research environment thus serves as a case study for the focus of this paper – the exploration of information science responses to challenges in the management, exchange and implementation of knowledge globally

A review of key planning and scheduling in the rail industry in Europe and UK

Planning and scheduling activities within the rail industry have benefited from developments in computer-based simulation and modelling techniques over the last 25 years. Increasingly, the use of computational intelligence in such tasks is featuring more heavily in research publications. This paper examines a number of common rail-based planning and scheduling activities and how they benefit from five broad technology approaches. Summary tables of papers are provided relating to rail planning and scheduling activities and to the use of expert and decision systems in the rail industry.EPSR

Moving from 2015 to 2030: challenges and opportunities for higher education in developing resilience to disasters

In recent years, the higher education community has played an increasingly important role in moving disaster science from a responsive, primarily technical discipline, to a broad, multi-disciplinary movement that seeks to build societal resilience to disaster. This study sets out some of the key challenges and op-portunities for higher education towards tackling the challenges set out in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 - 2030, which was adopted by 187 UN member states in March 2015. The study brings together existing literature in the field, as well as the results of various analysis and study projects undertaken by a European network project. Five key areas of focus are identified in working towards 2030: Link research, education and action; Integrate all hazards, stakeholders and disciplines; Collaborate regionally and globally; Facilitate policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity development; Develop flexible and customisable education programmes